Twitter confirmed this morning that it has acquired Zipdial, an Indian startup that has made a business off of something really unusual – missed calls. Both Twitter and Zipdial wrote blog posts (see here and here) about the buy-up, but neither revealed how much the deal is worth. This is Twitter’s first India acquisition.
In India, where people are very frugal with their rather pricey mobile call and data plans, missed calls have become a useful signal between friends and family members. Two school friends might agree that sending a missed call at around 8am is a sign that one person has arrived at the usual meeting spot to walk to school together, thereby saving them the expense of a call or SMS.
Zipdial managed to turn that into a sizable business by using these missed calls as a way for brands to engage with people. Twitter’s blog post picks up the explainer: “For example, through ZipDial, it’s easy to engage with a publisher or brand by making a toll-free ‘missed call’ to a designated phone number. The caller will then begin receiving inbound content and further engagement on their phone in real time through voice, SMS or an app notification. These interactions are especially appealing in areas where people aren’t always connected to data or only access data through intermittent wifi networks.”
It’s a little bit like a very basic form of Twitter – hence Twitter’s interest in picking up this startup in its biggest potential market (China, of course, being off limits). Zipdial’s blog post, written by co-founder Valerie Wagoner, explains how the two can merge: “Our ambitious goal is to make Twitter’s unique, great content accessible to 100 percent of the world’s mobile users, including those in emerging markets who will be experiencing the mobile Internet for the first time.”
Zipdial co-founder and CEO Valerie Wagoner.
Twitter’s India team joined the celebration with its own article welcoming the Zipdial team. “Our primary mission, bolstered by this acquisition, is to help every Indian with a mobile device get a great, relevant Twitter experience. We believe Twitter – a platform invented for SMS and rich in media – is a perfect match for India, a mobile-first country with a celebrated media heritage,” wrote Twitter’s Rishi Jaitly.
Twitter and Zipdial have already worked together in the past couple of years on a variety of brand marketing campaigns focused on India, such as MTV India’s #RockTheVote “Dial the Hashtag” campaign.
“This acquisition significantly increases our investment in India, one of the countries where we’re seeing great growth, and also brings us a new engineering office in Bangalore,” adds Twitter’s Christian Oestlien.
Read more on Zipdial:
Yo, meet your Indian cousin, ZipDial
ZipDial CEO Valerie Wagoner left glamorous Silicon Valley for India
10 women entrepreneurs in India who smashed the glass ceiling
This post Twitter just acquired India’s most fascinating startup appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Twitter just acquired India’s most fascinating startup
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